Auto Updates?

I was just alerted that one of my sites updated. I understand I can disable this but, frankly, I’m alarmed that this feature was implemented.

I do not allow any software to update automatically in my home office. I maintain the websites of many clients and I always perform a backup before updating their sites so I have a recovery path if a plugin fails or something else.

Thanks to this new “feature” I now have a lot of unplanned work to do because I have to modify the wp-config file to disallow this function for every site that I maintain.

I understand that old code is high risk, and I have educated my clients to understand this too. But the fact of the matter is that there have been WP upgrades which have NOT gone smoothly and I’ve been very glad that I waited a couple of weeks for the bugs to be worked out.

This, in my professional opinion, is NOT a good idea … not at all a good idea.

I take responsibility for not reading through the 3.8 release notes and taking action then to stop this intrusive functionality.

My entire WordPress site updated from 3.8.0 to 3.8.1 while I was sleeping. I didn’t get the chance to do a backup. What if something went wrong?

I use WordPress professionally and I’m outraged that the system is now doing its updates for me without my knowledge or permission. I don’t know how I can stand behind the system and say I support it if I can’t predict what it’s going to do! I really hope when I get to work today that the company intranet still works.

Dont take take this as a derogatory remark, it aint. Disagreeing, itself is not derogatory. Expressing an concern is not a derogatory remark.

The reason I am concerned about auto-updates is this:

I don’t trust you folk at WordPress anymore.

I don’t trust your judgement about what you folk think is “beautiful,” about what is “functional” etc. I don’t want you folk to make changes to something I use just about every day.

Having said that, I did read the extended comment about auto-updates and how safe they are, and so forth: But I dont trust you. How do I know that you will not just auto-updating other new even more beautiful design features?

Right now the only thing I would like to see coming down the pipe that I should update or upgrade are security patches.

Now to your question directly, your answer is like a foreign language to me, and I am sure to others:

Example:

To specifically enable development (nightly) updates, use the following:

As the “troublemaker” who started this thread, I’m glad to read that others in our community are not happy with this new feature.

I’m a code person and not concerned about modifying functions.php and/or wp-config.php. Why not have a setting available in the dashboard General Settings that disables these features so the fix is less daunting to folks who are not comfortable making such changes?